


As they say love should

by Lilliburlero



Category: Kind Are Her Answers - Mary Renault, The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: Background Poly, Crossover, Multi, Polyamory, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 21:33:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4977292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim thinks she knows everything there is to know about her parents' private lives. Pomona proves her wrong.</p><p>*</p><p>Content notes: character reacting with disgust to polyamorous relationships, sexism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As they say love should

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fengirl88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/gifts).



> The crossover fandoms, both acknowledged and stealth, are incidental to the story: you don't need to know them at all.

‘I think if the man who wrote _Sherlock Holmes_ wanted to believe in them,’ Pomona said, accepting Miss Heath’s hand, ‘it’s quite respectable for me to, for another year or two at least. Mother says I have the rest of my life to be a grown-up.’

Tim catted noiselessly. Her father flashed her a look of reproof which was not matched by the smile tugging at his lips. She glared back: it was beastly of him to let the Heath female invade their precious post-breakfast constitutional. La Heath had wanted to take the bridle-path down by the Limes, and even Tim perceived it was rude to veto the suggestion of a houseguest. So, with dismal predictability, Pomona was frolicking prettily in the orchard, and then came the inevitable _isn’t that Imelda and George’s delightful little girl?_ and the rest would have been silence, except this morning Pomona didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word. 

‘Your mother’s a wise woman. Adulthood’s terribly overrated, isn’t it, Ben?’ 

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He jingled change in his pocket. ‘Money, your own latch-key, letters, books, records, drink, the opposite sex―I suspect you’d miss them more than you think.’ 

Miss Heath giggled. ‘ _Pas devant―_ ’ 

‘Won’t do, Christie. It’ll probably have to be Greek, ironically enough―though her Latin’s not up to much. Edith’s nunnery will see to that, though, eh?’ 

Tim lolled her head and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, Fa―’ 

‘It’s barbarous, the way schools reduce the classics to a series of dry grammatical exercises,’ said Miss Heath. 

‘Oh yes! The Greek myths are full of primitive life force,’ Pomona breathed, blinking up at her. Little as she liked the woman, Tim was pleased to see Miss Heath look faintly startled and squeeze Pomona’s hand in the way that meant she wanted to let go. ‘Mother says,’ Pomona added, unabashed and clinging. 

‘For once, I happen to agree. It wasn’t a schoolmaster who showed me that the Greeks were people, not just declensions and conjugations―it was your father, Pomona.’ 

‘When you were at school together, Uncle Benjy?’ 

This had, Tim thought, to be the most revoltingly, putridly _foul_ day of her life to date. She couldn’t believe that Pomona still went on with that hopelessly kiddish Uncle and Aunty stuff. _Benjy_. 

‘Together―’ his eyes slid sideways to Miss Heath, ‘well, George is three years older, you know. He coached me a little, when I was in the Third Fifth―’ 

‘Re―ally,’ drawled Miss Heath, as if she understood something she hadn’t before. ‘Hot June afternoons in the Head of House’s study, smelling of pencil shavings and Platonic―’ 

‘He wasn’t Head of House,’ he said in a very clear, rather high voice. ‘He left too soon. Just a prefect. Look, anyway, here’s where we came in. What are you girls doing for the morning?’ 

That meant Miss Heath was going to be sitting for her portrait again. Tim shrugged. She could feel Pomona looking at her and determinedly stared at her tennis shoes. 

‘I think Mr Chambers might appreciate a couple of assistant carpenters for the outdoor stage,’ Miss Heath said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Better fun than helping the parish ladies scrub the village hall floor.’ 

Tim brightened briefly; she liked the young curate, a former tank commander who was nearly always available for quiet companionship punctuated by whistled jazz standards in return for some light manual labour in the churchyard. His almost implausible good looks had never really occurred to her before the prospect of sharing him with Pomona presented itself; but now they did, vividly and painfully. Her face felt scarlet-hot at the thought that Father probably supposed she, like the rest of the distaff side of the parish, had a pash on Mr Chambers, which she absolutely didn’t; she liked spending time with him, a man with his friend, that was all. 

‘Mm, okay.’ 

‘Right then,' said her father. 'Be back at a quarter to one―hadn’t you better tell your folks where you’re going, Pomona?’ 

‘Mother’s at the village hall anyway. Not scrubbing,’ she said with conscious charm, disengaging her hand from Miss Heath’s. ‘ _Delegating._ ’ 

He opened the gate and ushered Miss Heath down the path to the Keiths’ cottage, his hand hovering an inch or so behind the small of her back in its sage-green linen with cream piping, as if the arbutus hedge and crumbly brick paving presented some sort of vague threat to her. Tim sighed. _Frailty, thy name is woman_ , she thought. Pomona gazed meditatively after them. 

‘It’s a terrific stroke of good luck that we have a real actress for Ariadne. Mother says she moves so easily it isn’t―’ 

‘Oh, dry up. Don’t you have any thoughts of your own?’ 

Pomona considered this seriously, and appearing to come to a negative conclusion, dug in the voluminous pockets of her kaftan and withdrew a paper bag. ‘Cherry?’ 

Tim took a couple with an ungracious grunt. 

‘You are lucky,’ Pomona persisted, ‘having her stay with you. She’s so pretty and gay.’ 

‘You take her then, if you’re so keen.’ 

‘Why don’t you like her?’ 

Tim spat a stone into the ditch with an audible _ploo_. ‘Never said I didn’t.’ 

‘But you don’t. Is it that your mother doesn’t?’ 

Tim started slightly, and covered it, she hoped, by dangling the remaining cherry above her mouth and touching it with her extended tongue. When she was sure her voice would be steady, she said, very lightly, ‘Whatever _can_ you mean by that, Pippin?’ 

‘Don’t―’ Pomona began, but the interest of the topic overcame automatic protest. ‘Just what I said. If your mother liked Miss Heath.’ 

‘She’s supposed to be _her_ friend, as it happens. And she’s not really Miss.’ Tim hooked the cherry with her tongue and absorbed it. 

‘Oh. Actresses aren’t, though, often. They keep their née-names for professional reasons, don’t they? Where’s her husband? Is he abroad or something?’ 

‘No idea. She’s a―’ Tim expelled the stone onto the dusty lane before them, shooting it a satisfactory eight feet. ‘Divorcée.’ 

‘Gosh. That’s rather―dashing. You’d expect her lipstick to be brighter, wouldn’t you?’ 

Tim looked pitying. ‘What _are_ you on about?’ 

‘I don’t know, exactly―just that―’ 

‘Well shut up, then, since you clearly haven’t a clue. Miss Heath was married to a doctor, before the war. Mother was his receptionist for a few months, that’s how she knows her. _His_ first wife ran off to South Africa. She was a religious maniac.’ 

‘Golly.’ Pomona stowed a cherry in each of her round cheeks. 

‘But what she really is―Christie Heath, I mean―not the pious nutter,’ Tim said with a calculated air of important neutrality, ‘is Father’s mistress.’ 

Pomona wheezed constrictedly and coughed. Tim clobbered her unhelpfully between the shoulderblades, and she spat out a mess of half-chewed fruit and stone. 

‘Ugh, that’s repulsive, Pippin.’ 

‘Um.’ Pomona fished for a hanky, and drawing a blank, wiped her mouth on her bare wrist. She said hoarsely, ‘Look, Tim, she _can’t_ be―’ 

‘Que t’es bébé! Do you think married people don’t, or something? What do you think they’re doing now?’ 

‘No―’ Pomona said slowly. ‘Not exactly.’ She turned to Tim with a concerned frown. ‘Thalia―’ 

‘Tim. It’s Tim, all right? _Tim_.’ 

‘Tim, then,’ she relented. ‘You do know, don’t you?’ 

Tim wondered, with the idleness borne of extreme disquiet, if this day could actually _get_ any worse. But if you could think that, she reflected, it meant the worst was probably yet to come. She kicked a pebble. 

‘Of course I know, dummy.’ 

‘Oh, all right. Sorry. But you do see, then? That Miss Heath can’t possibly be―it would be _wrong_. It'd upset everything.’ 

‘I think Mother knows. But only awful suburban people make a fuss about things like that―’ She quickened her pace so Pomona had to trot to keep up. 

Pomona ran a few paces to get ahead of her, and walking backwards, puffed, ‘Oh God. You don’t, do you?’ 

‘Don’t what? Of course I do―oi! Pippin―’ Tim grabbed Pomona’s sleeve and hauled her onto the verge, ‘Motor!’ 

The blue Daimler swept past, showering them in dust. 

‘You don’t,’ Pomona insisted. Tim felt a tingling sensation in her nape. It wormed down her back, and she wriggled impatiently. 

‘Oh, do give it up. What’s this thing you’re so convinced you know and I don’t?’ 

‘Just―just that our parents are―have always been, since before we were born―sort of more than, you know, just friends.’ 

Tim stopped. Her stomach ached, as if she’d eaten a bag of cherries instead of just two. ‘It’s not―’ she said, ‘you’re―’ But Pomona’s face was pinkly candid. Whether it was true or not, she clearly believed it. ‘How do you―?' 

‘―know? Mother told me last Christmas. She said I was old enough. What’s wrong? It’s―quite natural, she says, they all love each other very much, and nobody gets hurt, because no-one tells any lies―’ 

That had the inimitable ring of one of Mrs Todd’s wholesome talks for the progressive instruction of infants. To her horror, Tim felt tears well up before they could announce their arrival with a warning prickle. It was filthy; utterly, unspeakably gruesome and vile. And that _Pomona_ should be the one to tell _her_ ; that Pomona, with her fairies and fancies, Pomona, who would always happily jump up to recite from _A Child’s Garden of Verses_ or trill ‘Au Clair de la Lune,’ Pomona, skipping and prancing in her leopardskin tunic, the tubbiest little Bacchante in the troupe, should have this unsettling intelligence before she, Tim, did, tipped the thing over from humiliating into wholly insupportable―how _could_ Pomona be so insouciant? She didn’t understand, that was it. Poor little Pippin didn’t understand what it _meant_ , she thought it was just harmless soppiness, holding hands and giving each other roses―that must be it. 

‘Tim―Tim―look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I’m sorry if I shocked―’ 

Tim yawned in order to be able to wipe her eyes. ‘Shock―don’t make me laugh. I thought you were going to tell me something I didn’t―’ Dragging finger and thumb down her nose, she made the mistake of looking Pomona full in the face, which wore a furrowed, rubbery expression that spoke all too clearly of her willingness to collude in the kindly pretence that of course Tim knew, and completion of the sentence was suddenly impossible. A wave of shame drenched her, turning everything grey-green and wobbly. She groped blindly, found Pomona’s shoulder and shoved it hard enough to make her stumble heavily, and set off at a pelt down the lane, mumbling feebly for appearances’ sake, ‘Race you the rest of the way.’ 

Running furiously, she easily outpaced Pomona, who had even less enthusiasm for such challenges than Tim herself. It was only when she had collapsed, genuinely spent, on the bench in the lych-gate, and was watching the waving blonde and bilious yellow shape lumbering up the gentle slope of Church Street slowly attain human size, that it occurred to her to wonder why she had unhesitatingly passed the turning for the High Street and the village green, where the stage for the pageant was being set up. She thought, on balance, that she would prefer not to know. She stood up on watery legs, shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her skirt, and sauntered out, whistling, unsteadily at first, then more confidently as Pomona panted into earshot, the narrow, rising notes of ‘Indian Summer.’

**Author's Note:**

> I first mooted the Todd/Keith polyamorous quadrilateral [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4383719), and fengirl88, as well as a few others, were kind enough to say they were interested in hearing more.
> 
> The title is from Philip Larkin's poem ['For Sidney Bechet.'](http://allpoetry.com/For-Sidney-Bechet)
> 
> Sidney Bechet, [Indian Summer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j5ZeYAjpSs).


End file.
